Letter Picture Signs

Photo Letter Art is a crafty Creative Solution where you take pictures of letters and spell-out a word or name. I recently decided to try doing this using letters in my neighborhood to spell out our last name.

I biked around my community and snapped photos of street signs, businesses, parks, etc., using my iPhone 5s camera.

It took me three separate trips because some letters didn’t come out in focus, especially when I wanted to obtain a letter from a specific place and that sign wasn’t cooperative. For instance, I really wanted a letter from my Church… but none of the signs were cooperating and the images weren’t working. Finally I got the idea to take a pic of the cross in the stained glass for the “T,” which worked really well.

If you want to try this, I’d suggest:

Write down the letters in the word/name you’re trying to spell out (somehow I forgot to account for the two “E’s” in my last name).

Take at least 5 different photos of the different letters (again, the out-of-focus problem).

I printed the letters at my neighborhood CVS on 4×6 paper. With 8 letters in my last name, that meant I’d need a board to be more than 32 inches long (8 prints x 4″ wide prints = 32″ + board).

My husband cut a 1×8 board 35″ and routed the edges. I painted the background in the color of our exterior trim, mod podged the letters on to the board (with a homemade 50-50 water and glue solution), coated with poly, and screwed eye-holes into the top for hanging. It hangs on our back patio (and I love it!).

It turned out so well that the kids each asked to have their first names done for a name plate on their bedroom doors. They helped find the letter “X” for each of their names by biking around the neighborhood with me, which they loved.

For these, I decided to make the letters smaller. Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I “printed” two 4×3 images on each 4×6 print, cut, and assembled. For the boys’ Letter Art signs, I used scrap wood that I painted with leftover latex paint from their bedrooms. Then mod podged and poly as before. I mounted their signs on their bedroom doors using Command 3M strips.

When I made the boys signs, I also created a second Family Name sign for our front porch, which hangs above the mailbox. This is also the smaller 4×3 size letters, so it’s a smaller board.

This is a pretty versatile craft, since you can spell out any word or name by using the signs you see in your neighborhood every day.